“No,” said the Matron, “I don’t suppose she would.”
Gently she lifted Nurse Dakers’s head and smoothed the pillows.
“Now I want you to try and get some sleep. You’ll feel a great deal better when you wake up. And‘ try not to worry.” “
The girl’s face relaxed. She smiled up at the Matron and, putting out her hand, briefly touched Miss Taylor’s face. Then she snuggled down into the sheets as if resolute for sleep. So that was all right But of course it was. It always worked. How easy and how insidiously satisfying was this doling out of advice and comfort, each portion individually flavored to personal taste. She might be a Victorian vicar’s wife presiding over a soup kitchen. To each according to her need. It happened in the hospital every day. A ward Sister’s brightly professional voice. “Here’s Matron to see you, Mrs. Cox. I’m afraid Mrs. Cox isn’t feeling quite so well this morning, Matron.” A tired pain- racked face smiling bravely up from the pillow, mouth avid for its morsel of affection and reassurance. The Sisters bringing their problems, the perpetual unsolvable problems over work and incompatible personalities.
“Are you feeling happier about it now, Sister?”
“Yes, thank you, Matron. Much happier.”
The Group Secretary, desperately coping with his own inadequacies.
“I should feel better if we could have just a word about the problem, Matron.” Of course he would! They all wanted to have just a word about the problem. They all went away feeling better. Hear what comfortable words our Matron said. Her whole working life seemed a blasphemous liturgy of reassurance and absolution. And how much easier both to give and to accept was this bland milk of human kindness than the acid of truth. She could imagine the blank incomprehension, the resentment with which they would greet her private credo.
“I haven’t anything to offer. There isn’t any help. We are all alone, all of us from the moment of birth until we die. Our past is our present and our future. We have to live with ourselves until there isn’t any more time left. If you want salvation look to yourself. There’s nowhere else to look.”
She sat for a few more minutes and then quietly left the room. Nurse Dakers gave a brief valedictory smile. As she entered the corridor she saw Sister Brumfett and Mr. Courtney-Briggs coming out of his patient’s room. Sister Brumfett bustled up.
“I’m sorry, Matron. I didn’t know you were on the ward.”
She always used the formal title. They might spend the whole of their off-duty together driving or golfing; they might visit a London show once a month with the cozy, boring regularity of an old married couple; they might drink their early morning tea and late night hot milk together in indissoluble tedium. But in the hospital Brumfett always called her Matron. The shrewd eyes searched hers.
“You’ve seen the new detective, the man from the Yard?”
“Only briefly. I’m due for a session with him as soon as I get back.”
Mr. Courtney-Briggs said: “I know him as a matter of fact; not well but we have met You’ll find him reasonable and intelligent He’s got quite a reputation of course. He’s said to work very quickly. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a considerable asset The hospital can stand only so much disruption. He’ll want to see me I suppose, but he’ll have to wait Let him know that I’ll pop across to Nightingale House when I’ve finished my ward round, will you Matron?”
“I’ll tell him if he asks me,” replied Miss Taylor calmly. She turned to Sister Brumfett:
“Nurse Dakers is calmer now, but I think it would be better if she were not disturbed by visitors. She’ll probably manage to get some sleep. Ill send over some magazines for her and some fresh flowers. When is Dr. Snelling due to see her?”
“He said he would come in before lunch, Matron.”
“Perhaps you would ask him to be good enough to have a word with me. I shall be in the hospital all day.”
Sister Brumfett said: “I suppose that Scotland Yard detective will want to see me too. I hope he isn’t going to take too long about it I’ve got a very sick ward.”
The Matron hoped that Brum wasn’t going to be too difficult It would be unfortunate if she thought she could treat a Chief Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police as if he were a recalcitrant House Surgeon. Mr. Courtney- Briggs, no doubt, would be his usual arrogant self, but she had a feeling that Superintendent Dalgliesh would be able to cope with Mr. Courtney-Briggs.
They walked to the door of the ward together. Miss Taylor’s mind was already busy with fresh problems. Something would have to be done about Nurse Dakers’s mother. It would be some years before the child was fully qualified as a district nurse. In the meantime she must be relieved of the constant anxiety about her mother. It might be helpful to have a word with Raymond Grout There might be a clerical job somewhere in the hospital which would suit her. But would that be fair? One couldn’t indulge one’s own urge to help at someone else’s expense. Whatever problems of staff recruitment the hospital service might have in London, Grout had no difficulty in filling his clerical jobs. He had a right to expect efficiency; and the Mrs. Dakers of this world, dogged by their own inadequacy as much as by ill-luck, could seldom offer that She supposed she would have to telephone the woman; the parents of the other students too. The important thing was to get the girls out of Nightingale House. The training schedule couldn’t be disrupted; it was tight enough as it was. She had better arrange with the House Warden for them to sleep in the Nurses’ Home-there would be room enough with so many nurses in the sick bay- and they could come over each day to use the library and lecture room. And then there would be the Vice-Chairman of the Hospital Management Committee to consult and the Press to cope with, the inquest to attend and the funeral arrangements to be discussed. People would be wanting to get in touch with her continually. But first, and most important, she must see Superintendent Dalgliesh.
Chapter Four
I
The Matron and the Sisters had their living-quarters on the third floor of Nightingale House. When he reached the top of the staircase Dalgliesh saw that the south-west wing had been cut off from the rest of the landing by a specially constructed partition in white-painted wood in which a door, meanly proportioned and insubstantial in contrast to the high ceiling and oak-lined walls, bore the legend “Matron’s Flat”. There was a push bell, but before pressing it he briefly explored the corridor. It was similar to‘ the one below but fitted with a red carpet which, although faded and scuffed, gave an illusion of comfort to the emptiness of this upper floor.
Dalgliesh moved silently from door to door. Each bore a handwritten name card slotted into the brass holder. He saw that Sister Brumfett occupied the room immediately adjacent to Matron’s flat. Next was a bathroom, functionally divided into three mean cubicles, each with its bath and lavatory. The slot on the next door bore Sister Gearing’s name; the next two rooms were empty. Sister Rolfe was at the north end of the corridor immediately next to the kitchen and utility room. Dalgliesh had no authority to enter any of the bedrooms but he tentatively turned the handles on each of the doors. As he expected, they were locked.
The Matron herself opened the door of her flat to him within seconds of his ring, and he followed her into the sitting-room. Its size and magnificence caught the breath. It occupied the whole of the south-west turret, an immense white-painted octagonal room, the ceiling starred in patterns of gold and pale blue, and with two huge windows facing out towards the hospital. One of the walls was lined from ceiling to floor with white bookcases. Dalgliesh resisted the impertinence of walking casually towards them in the hope of assessing Mary Taylor’s character by her taste in literature. But he could see from where he stood that there were no textbooks, no bound official reports or sloping banks of files. This was a living-room, not an office.
An open fire burnt in the grate, the wood still crackling with its recent kindling. It had as yet made no impression on the air of the room which was cold and very still. Matron was wearing a short scarlet cape over her gray dress. She had taken off her head-dress and the huge coil of yellow hair lay like a burden on the frail, etiolated neck.
